Baseball Blogs Weigh In: Taillon, Orioles, Red Sox

On this date in 2002, history was made as there was no designated hitter used in a full slate of games for the first time since 1972, as Leo Panetta of National Pastime writes. That’s because that day saw 14 inter-league contests all played in National League parks. Here’s this week’s look around the baseball blogosphere..

Comments

Napoli has been in hot and LONG cold streak worse than 2y ago so far this year. Unfortunately? The hot streak this year only lasted a little over a week. As for Hanley Ramirez? He was hammering the ball, until hurting his shoulder end of April, had 10HR then. He dropped nearly 50pts off his BA and has only now began hitting with authority again. nagging injuries, like fouling that ball off his knee in Baltimore, which took him out of a game in the last Oriole series.

The Red Sox have been embarrassing to watch these past few weeks. I still had hopes they can battle back to .500 and possibly compete. However being 8 games back and looking at how they are playing and their team chemistry tells me they are about done.

It also looks like they’ve made two big mistakes with the Sandoval and Porcello contracts. Hanley was fine offensively until he got injured but his defense in left is horrendous. Once Ortiz retires he needs to DH.

That’s exactly how I feel about it, that it would just be settling for an offer.

To me, there’s a big difference between getting 2 top-100 prospects and neither being top-50. One is more of a consensus 60-100 prospect according to BA, BP, and MLB (Margot) and the other is a borderline top-100 only making the cut at 82 on BA (Johnson). Of course, things change in season. Add in Vazquez recovering from TJS and it’s an easy pass for me.

Now if it’s July 31 and that is the best offer on the table, I’d have to think long and hard about it. I could find a Margot+ package worth doing, but that one doesn’t do it for me at the moment.

Agreed….You have to ask yourself this..how many light packages do you think The Rays were offered for 1+ year of Price before they got what they wanted. IMO any deal that doesn’t start with an MLB proven player is too light.

Braun really hasn’t been that Tier A player that he was in 2011 in a while. I don’t see the Mets deal a top 80 prospect, plus Montero, plus 2 other notable MLB pieces in exchange for Braun, whos owed 100M for the next 5 seasons.

Not trying to sound like a red sox hater but boy there gm needs to be fired. I know the love fest esp. and certain media outlets have with the port little engine that could known as the “red Socks” but this team deserves such negative press. They just spent approx. 140 million on cuban imports, all of which look like bad signings. Yan Moncada stats in single A look like the 20yo is over matched. Castillo who is 28yo looks like he should be sent down. I think this team was constructed so poorly but they continue to get a free pass. Every Red Sox prospect is the next big thing and when they spend a boatload of money they are excused and if you ask Larry Luchino he will do everything in his power to convince you the Red Socks are small market team and the big bad evil empire is stealing every teams players. Look at the Red Sox how they are constructed and how over hyped there homegrown players are and that speaks volumes on why this organization with there high payroll should be labeled a failing big market team. 2009 was an aberration with a ton of luck after the Dodgers helped them shed salary. This is simply the Worst team money can buy?

Every team has their share of overhyped prospects. Dom Brown was once a top-5 prospect in all of baseball (and ranked higher than Mike Trout) and you see where that’s gotten him. It happens all across baseball, Boston is not alone. Prospects are a gamble and developing them is not an exact science.

Moncada is 20, in his first year in the US, and you’re ready to judge him after 20 games at single-A? And Castillo has a little over 100 PA’s in MLB, a little quick to judge there too I’d say.